A Suc­cess Story

For over thir­ty years, the Insti­tut Bauen und Umwelt e.V. (IBU) has ded­i­cat­ed itself to the prin­ci­ples of sus­tain­able con­struc­tion. A crit­i­cal fac­tor in achiev­ing this has been the avail­abil­i­ty of neu­tral prod­uct infor­ma­tion. With its more than 200 mem­bers, includ­ing 42 asso­ci­a­tions from Ger­many and oth­er Euro­pean coun­tries, the IBU has become Europe’s largest asso­ci­a­tion of build­ing indus­try manufacturers.

blankFor over thir­ty years, the Insti­tut Bauen und Umwelt e.V. (IBU) has ded­i­cat­ed itself to the prin­ci­ples of sus­tain­able con­struc­tion. A crit­i­cal fac­tor in achiev­ing this has been the avail­abil­i­ty of neu­tral prod­uct infor­ma­tion. With its more than 200 mem­bers, includ­ing 42 asso­ci­a­tions from Ger­many and oth­er Euro­pean coun­tries, the IBU has become Europe’s largest asso­ci­a­tion of build­ing indus­try manufacturers.

The IBU oper­ates the lead­ing inter­na­tion­al pro­gramme for envi­ron­men­tal prod­uct dec­la­ra­tions (EPDs), which pro­vide clear, sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly-based prod­uct infor­ma­tion in accor­dance with uni­fied stan­dards. This inde­pen­dent source of infor­ma­tion for con­struc­tion prod­ucts and build­ing com­po­nents ensures that the eco­log­i­cal aspect can be tak­en into account in the sus­tain­abil­i­ty assess­ment of build­ings. Over the years, what start­ed out as a rel­a­tive­ly cum­ber­some stan­dard with a small mar­ket niche has devel­oped into a mar­ket-friend­ly and recog­nised for­mat. The con­struc­tion indus­try has become the only branch in Ger­many to offer a com­pre­hen­sive sys­tem for mak­ing inde­pen­dent sus­tain­abil­i­ty-rel­e­vant infor­ma­tion avail­able for the entire range of indus­try products.

blankAlong with Ger­many and fif­teen oth­er Euro­pean coun­tries, IBU mem­bers and dec­la­ra­tion hold­ers also come from the USA and Asian coun­tries. The IBU cur­rent­ly sup­ports 2,000 build­ing mate­ri­als and con­struc­tion prod­uct indus­try com­pa­nies in the cre­ation of their own EPDs. Togeth­er, they have pub­lished more than 1,700 EPDs, which are avail­able for view­ing and free down­load at https://ibu-epd.com/published-epds. Mutu­al-recog­ni­tion part­ner­ships have also been estab­lished with sev­en inter­na­tion­al EPD oper­a­tors. Recog­nis­ing that sus­tain­able con­struc­tion will cre­ate an increased demand for EPDs from build­ing prod­uct end-users, the indus­try has invest­ed over 25 mil­lion euros in EPDs – a sum that under­scores the impor­tance of EPDs as a source of valu­able high-qual­i­ty information.

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